Imagine Saturn without its distinctive rings. Now imagine two large icy moons inching closer and closer until, BOOM! chaos. What was solid has become a fluid. Shards of Diamantine scatter in the darkness. Many pieces of ice roll near Saturn and remain there, dancing in unison around the gas giant, eventually forming the massive object’s elaborate disk.
This spectacular scene was born out of an attempt to solve one of the solar system’s greatest mysteries: where Saturn’s rings came from and when they formed.
Research results published this week astrophysical journalI’m leaning towards the idea that they are not billions of years old, but were created in the recent astronomical past, perhaps by the collision of two things. modestly with size A frost-flecked moon only a few hundred million years old.
“It would be great if dinosaurs had enough telescopes,” he said. Jacob Kegereisa research scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, is one of the study’s authors.
Dr. Kegerreis and his colleagues tested the younger ring hypothesis using a distributed research facility using advanced computing in the United Kingdom. This supercomputing system allowed researchers to repeatedly recreate the disaster and its immediate aftermath in greater detail, finding that this origin story was plausible.
The team’s simulations could help scientists study not just the origins of Saturn’s rings, but the origins of all worlds. He said Saturn, with its countless moons, “can be thought of as a mini-solar system.” scott shepherdHe is an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington and was not involved in the new study. “Saturn is a perfect laboratory for understanding how planets and moons form.”
Saturn is 4.5 billion years old, almost as old as the Sun. Its rings were thought to be ancient as well, until the Cassini spacecraft studied the planet closely for 13 years. Over billions of years, they would have been tainted by other dusty space debris.But a ring of ice appeared Too shiny and beautiful Be primitive.
This and other evidence convinced many scientists studying Saturn that the rings appeared hundreds of millions of years ago. If they did not appear during a period of upheaval in the early solar system, when large objects were regularly colliding with each other, that means they formed during a relatively calm period in the recent astronomical past. . But how?
Saturn currently has at least 145 moons, and probably had many more before its rings formed. Scientists argue that the sun’s enormous gravity may have gradually destabilized the orbits of some satellites. culminates in the collision of the two moons.
A new study has found that when two icy moons collide, tons of frozen confetti is blown towards Saturn. If that ice were to stay within the Roche limit (the threshold at which the planet’s gravitational currents would cause the moon to collapse), it would have a chance of forming a ring.
Debris that remained inside the limit could have collided with other satellites, breaking them apart and ejecting more material. They can come together to form nascent satellites.
It is not clear which of the current satellites are relatively young.but rareAn example of this may be Saturn’s second largest moon after Titan. If it were older, it would have experienced various gravitational shifts and its orbit would have been more eccentric. But instead, Rhea is circular and flat, suggesting that it formed very recently, likely built from newly ejected moon-forming material.
Some of Saturn’s moons may have potentially habitable underground oceans. But if those moons are younger than believed, that possibility may be lower.
“We don’t yet know how likely life is to evolve there,” Kegereis says. But if some of these moons are younger than scientists think, “it may be less likely that life exists there.”
This study does not settle the long-standing debate over the origin of Saturn’s halo. However, it emphasizes that the ring is not a static decoration, but something temporary and ever-changing.
“I think it’s interesting how dramatic the solar system can be, whether it’s on Saturn or elsewhere,” Dr. Kegereis said.